Once a great champion of dangerous excess, Zevon, 56, has been sober for nearly two decades and says he quit smoking several years ago. Even Billy Bob Thornton, a longtime friend of Zevon who is better known for acting than singing, contributes background vocals. Several of his peers were happy to pitch in - Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris and Stevie Nicks among them. The show and album also prove that composing your own obituary doesn't have to be a morbid affair. As a documentary subject, Zevon is engaging and smart, just like his best songs. The making of the album is chronicled in the first installment of a new VH1 series, "Inside Out," which premieres tonight. On the disc's opener, "Dirty Life & Times," Zevon wins a cheap grin with lines like "I'm looking for a woman with low self-esteem." But the final, spare ballad is likely to move fans to tears when Zevon sings, "Keep me in your heart for a while." "The Wind" is a sometimes raucous, sometimes touching mix of folk, blues and rock. It's as if he willed himself to finish "The Wind" to fulfill a pledge he made in song long ago: "I'll sleep when I'm dead."Īs a coda to his long career, this disc serves notice: Zevon was no one-hit novelty act, though the larger public may have perceived him as such.
He had to tape a couple of songs at home when he grew too sick to make it into the studio. During these sessions he was numbed by morphine, his voice strained by pain, his body wasting away. The album is uneven, offering only echoes of the artfulness we've come to expect from Zevon, who penned such classics as "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" and "Hasten Down the Wind." Still, let's give the man a break. But he isn't the type to tolerate phony praise or pathos, so we'll offer none for "The Wind." As the years rolled on, he released some good albums that not many people bought, and that's too bad. Proving, once again, the old showbiz adage: Death - even a death foretold - can be a good career move.Ī singer-songwriter with a gift for mordant humor, Zevon has never recaptured his 1970s "Werewolves of London" heyday. Zevon's version of the song features Phil Everly singing harmony vocals, and also David Lindley playing slide guitar.Last year, after doctors doomed him with a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer, Warren Zevon headed straight to the studio to record a final album, "The Wind," invited VH1 to do a show about it and garnered a lot of publicity. It was with Browne's assistance that Zevon got a major record contract. Their relationship played a significant role in his career thereafter. The track was produced by Jackson Browne, who met Zevon in the mid-seventies. The lyrics of the song describe the latter days of a relationship between a man and a woman, with the woman accepting that "nothing's working out the way they planned" before the man accepts that "she needs to be free". The song was later covered by Linda Ronstadt, who would use the song as the title track for her seventh solo LP. "Hasten Down the Wind" is a song written and recorded by Warren Zevon and featured on his eponymous major-label debut album. 1976 single by Warren Zevon "Hasten Down the Wind"
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